The Forged Note. Micheaux Oscar

gave the music. Imagine such a spectacle! In the bourbon and always democratic south, our people hiring a white orchestra, at a fabulous sum; for, since long before we were free, Negroes have made music for the richest white people to dance by.

      "Surely the old order changeth!

      "Negro doctors live by the patronage of their race, positively; the white people would not hire one to doctor a dog. In the dark ages, when it was felt that a Negro was incompetent for anything else but to act as a slave, some excuse could be given for Negroes to hire white doctors. But today, all race loving people give their practice to their own, except those who are nearly white, and wish they were. But more than half of those at the ball have white doctors, and wouldn't hire one of those with whom they danced. But Negro doctors expect Negro practice, and deplore it terribly when Negroes hire white physicians! On the heels of this, too, they say "Shoo fly!" to Negro musicians who are competent to play for the whites, but not for Negro doctors. Like everything else that relates to our people—except their money—our professionals wrinkle their faces, and conclude without trial, that no Negro orchestra is properly trained to play for their balls; and Negroes who conduct newspapers do not know enough to write a part of what they read; books of Negro authors are not read by them, because they don't know enough—in the minds of these hypocrites—and so it goes in everything. They could not have held their convention in the white auditorium, even if permitted to, because that would have cost more than they were able to pay.

      "Now, if Negro orchestras are incompetent as musicians and are, therefore, relegated to the rear, and a white orchestra is hired to give music, and if Negroes as authors and editors, do not know enough to write a part of what they should read, and, moreover, if Negroes who happen not to be the scion of some white man, and, therefore, possessed of a yellow face, are not good enough to mingle and associate with them, then the Negro doctors are not fit to 'kill' us. Why not let the white man do this? Admitting that the white orchestra and the white editor and author have more advantages than do the Negroes in the same vocation, is it not credible that the same applies in regard to the doctors? Is it not to be appreciated that, while the white man, often and mostly the son of a rich parent, is taking a post-graduate course abroad, the poor Negro boy is slinging hash in a cheap hotel—most of the best ones hire white help now—to get the wherewith to go back and finish school?

      "Oh, we have thought this brave in our people these many years, and our very hearts and souls and sympathies have been with them in this great effort!

      "And we are repaid in these terms!

      "The black-skinned people who pay them their hard-earned money, that we might have a representative set of men as our leaders, have been scorned for their pains!

      "They, the doctors, set up what they silently look upon as society, "blue-veined people." How they must deplore that they are colored, in a literal sense! "We are the best people!" they cry. The insurance companies, started and led to their present position of success by black men, use every means, subtle and otherwise, to throw business to these men. Likewise do the lodges. And with all that, not more than a dozen or so are making a decent living in Attalia. We are still very poor people. Yet when society comes before us, the black ones are not good enough to play for. We must close. It makes us sick!"